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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Wild Yeast Capture

I’m officially off the rails with sour
brewing. Can’t stop, won’t stop. I have a sour blonde fermenting, a solera
souring and bottles of Berliners and gose ready to drink. Even with that all going on I’m finding new
ways to scratch the sour brewing itch.
This time I’m intrigued by wild yeast capture. I don’t know why it intrigues me but there’s
something about using yeast in the air to make beer. What if my backyard holds the next Cantillon
strain that’s going to propel me to fame and fortune!? (hahahahah)

Anyways, I started reading up on yeast capture
via /r/Homebrewing and The Mad Fermentationist’s new sour book and found it to
be really easy. I was brewing soon so I
figured I’d give it a shot. What’s the
worst that could happen?

As I was brewing my kolsch, I took a few cups
of wort in the middle of the boil that had been hopped a little bit and funneled
this off into a sanitized (probably not necessary) glass pie dish, took a hop
sack and stretched it over the top and left it while I finished up my
boil. After it cooled and I was done
brewing, I took it inside and put it into a 32 oz growler. I was going to put an airlock on it but
couldn’t find any so I just put tin foil on top. After a few days I saw some white appear on
top and it appeared to be fermenting. I
left it untouched and let it go. The
visible fermentation has stopped but there is some solids on the bottom that
have collected. After reading The Mad
Fermentationist’s book, I’m going to leave this for a few weeks to let the
lacto and other bugs out compete the bad ones and create acid and then I’ll
step it up into another starter. At that
point I might try it and I’ll update accordingly!Update: 7/27/14-Had to dump the starter due to mold. Before the mold showed up there was a significant amount of stuff settled at the bottom of the growler. Until next time!